No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I was walking through my village and took a popular short cut on the far end. There’s an old, abandoned hotel there, which used to be used for tuberculosis patients who came to be cured in the village. It’s a pretty area with a spectacular view. The hotel is abandoned, and it’s rather romantic and picturesque, but with graffiti, because it’s probably a place where kids dare each other to go. I’m not sure how safe the structure is and I would love it to be either fixed up or torn down.

On the way down I found a dead, half eaten animal. I think it was a cat. It was relatively fresh (no bloating or maggots) but it wasn’t going to be pretty in a day or so. It was close to a sign post for the hike, so I took a photo of the sign post and the animal and tried to send the photos to the folks in charge of picking up trash in town…except that as I was doing to the manipulation, I could see that the photos were being sent somewhere to my list of ‘favorites’. I had no idea where. I looked through a couple of messaging apps but couldn’t find where I’d sent it!

A friend wrote back after a half an hour and asked me why I was sending her photos of dead animals, so at least I found who it was (and it wasn’t my colleague who was having her birthday that day. That wouldn’t have been so nice, “Hey, happy birthday, thinking of you and sending a photo of a dead, decapitated cat)”. I deleted the photo sent accidentally to my friend and took a quick photo of a bouquet of wildflowers and sent that instead. I found the right people in the village to go pick up the carcass and got the message to them. All fixed.

I’m still curious what killed the cat, though. It could have just died and been eaten by whatever found it. There is a mating pair of eagles here, and they would definitely go for something cat/rabbit sized (they tend to pick up small animals and let them drop, then fly down to eat them), but you’d think the cat would defend itself. No idea. I will not post the photo, because it was a bit gruesome. Was it dogs? I don’t think we have any wolves around here (they’re on the other side of the valley, with a highway and a river between us) but that’s a possibility. I don’t think a fox would take on a cat. All very curious.